The Leeds-based company, which has 121 stores and employs 2,500 people, appointed Ernst & Young as administrators on Wednesday and immediately made 150 staff at its head office redundant.

It is the latest in a long list of retail failures since Christmas, including Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster, with the total loss of up to 10,000 jobs.

Hunter Kelly, one of the administrators appointed by E&Y, said Republic had suffered from a "very sudden and rapid decline in sales in late January".

"The impact on cash flows has resulted in the business being unable to continue to operate outside of an insolvency process. Unfortunately, it has been necessary to make 150 employees at the head office in Leeds redundant," he said.

Kelly said Republic would continue to trade "with a view to selling the business as a going concern".

"The brand Republic is well recognised, particularly in the north. It has a powerful website offering, owns well-known brand names, and has some very attractive and profitable stores," Kelly added. "We are grateful for the continued support of all employees and customers during this time, and would like to thank everyone at Republic for their commitment and hard work as the business continues to trade."

Republic closed individual stores' Twitter accounts last week after an HMV employee "live-tweeted" redundancies at the entertainment retailer, according to Drapers magazine.

Republic's main corporate Twitter account was still tweeting on Tuesday night. The account, @RepublicFashion, failed to respond to numerous tweets asking if it was going bust. Lesbinum asked: "NOOOO @republicfashion are going into administration :'("

Republic's profits collapsed by 86% to £3.7m in the year to January 2012, the latest year available at Companies House.

Andy Bond, the former chief executive of Asda, quit as Republic's chairman last week as the company brought in KPMG to help it offload some of its stores.

Republic was bought by private equity group TPG for £300m in 2010. Its previous owner, Change Capital Partners, a private equity firm run by former Marks & Spencer executives Luc Vandevelde and Roger Holmes, more than quadrupled its money by selling the chain to TPG.

TPG has twice been forced to pump in more cash to keep the chain afloat. In November TPG, Bond and Republic's founders pumped in £20m. At the time, TPG said it wanted to at least double the number of Republic stores in the UK and Ireland to more than 200.

The chain was founded in 1986 in Leeds by Tim Whitworth and Carl Brewins. Whitworth started selling clothes as a Saturday boy on a market stall and went on to build Republic into a nationwide chain.

He left the business last year and was replaced by Paul Sweetenham, the former boss of TK Maxx in Britain.

Whitworth is said to have amassed a £60m fortune, according to therichest.org. He reportedly owned 23% of the equity at the time of the sale to TPG.